Drunk on the Job

(BOD - Jenny from the Block. She used to have a little, now she has a lot.)

As a self-proclaimed athlete who possesses absolutely zero transcendent talents or abilities, I really want to hate Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers. I want to hate that he is, by all intents and purposes, a raging alcoholic with the soft doughy physique of a frat boy still trying to relive his university party days by drinking a 2-4 every weekend and hitting on girls born after 1990.


And yet, despite all of his extracurricular activities and the musculature of Buddha, he is still one of the best hitters in the game of baseball. Even in my dreams I am not as good a baseball player as Cabrera is after an all night bender and that’s a very tough pill for me to swallow. I literally cannot comprehend how talented the man is at his job.

When I’m wasted or hungover, I barely have enough mental acuity and coordination to turn on the TV to watch Saved by the Bell reruns, let alone try to hit a major league calibre fastball.

After Cabrera’s latest run-in with the police—where he was pulled over with an open bottle of scotch on the front seat, pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card and refused a breathalyser test—there was a groundswell of support in the media and from fans that Miggy seek professional help for his addiction to alcohol.

The last time Cabrera’s out of control drinking was made public was two years ago when he pulled an all-nighter getting lathered up before the most important game of the 2009 season for the Tigers.

I sincerely doubt that these are isolated incidents and I’m sure Cabrera has been boozing heavily since then out of the prying eyes of the 24 hour news cycle.

Interestingly, the call for Miggy to enter a rehabilitation program ended after he reported to spring training and proceeded to crush balls all over Lakeland, Florida in batting practice. I hadn’t heard Cabrera’s name in the news for a few days until he hit a screaming double to the base of the wall against the Blue Jays.

This led me to a thought: will anyone truly force Cabrera to seek help if his on-field performance doesn’t suffer?

There is a litany of baseball players who played great while assisted by a variety of recreational substances (Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle immediately spring to mind).

Do the Detroit Tigers really care about Cabrera’s well-being or do they care solely about his production on the field? It appears as though Detroit will turn a blind eye if Miggy goes for 30, .300, 100 this year. Of course, if he hits .250 and leaves a legion of runners stranded on the basepaths, then it’s time to seek treatment. Until that time, the drinks are on the house.

Now was the above discussion on Miguel Cabrera just a thinly-veiled excuse to talk some sports before weighing in on the delightfully entertaining train wreck that is Charlie Sheen? Maybe.

Over the past week, Sheen has provided sound bite after sound bite of just pure comedy gold. Besides the fact that he looks like a 65 year old man, his assaults on everyone and everything and his claims that he’s fuelled not by drugs, but by Tiger blood and Adonis DNA (hey, me too!), have me breathlessly checking cyberspace for the next update.

Apparently, he’s been clean and sober for a couple of weeks now, but it’s evident that the cornucopia of drugs he’s snorted, injected and tasted over the years has permanently crossed his mental wiring.

It’s really too bad he has kids because otherwise this would be a great story of a man living the dream. He lives in a mansion, makes ungodly sums of money, does whatever he wants with zero consequences and enjoys the company of two skanks half his age. Why am I not a famous actor again?

The call for Charlie to seek help by CBS et al. rings hollow to me and is similar to the trials of Miggy Cabrera. No one said anything about Sheen’s rampant drug use and partying when he was turning Two and a Half Men into ratings gold and making huge gobs of money for everyone involved.

But now that the show’s been cancelled and the gravy train has stopped, everyone is concerned about his well-being? I call bullshit.

It’s amazing that guys like Cabrera and Sheen can perform their jobs at such a high level when intoxicated and it’s shameful that their bosses only want them to get actual help if there’s a chance of their performances suffering.